Category News

A human rights-based approach to coral reef protection could ensure governments are held to account for safeguarding marine ecosystems and empower local and Indigenous communities to demand sustainable solutions and climate justice, a new study suggests. An estimated one billion people rely on healthy coral reefs globally for food security, coastal protection and income from tourism and other services. If reefs and their ecosystems are lost, the impact on human health and economic wellbeing would be catastrophic.

Lead author, Dr Emma Camp from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), said the window of opportunity to conserve coral reefs is rapidly closing and despite numerous protective measures, coral reefs around the world continue to degrade.

“2024 marks the fourth global cora...

A study of samples taken from inside the bodies of centuries-old coral has revealed the threat climate change now poses to the Great Barrier Reef. Researchers in Australia say temperatures in and around the vast coral reef over the past decade are the highest recorded in 400 years. Extreme heat has already caused five mass bleaching events in the past nine years alone. Writing in the journal Nature, external, the scientists behind the study say increased temperatures, driven by climate change, now pose an “existential threat” to this natural wonder of the world.

“The science tells us that the Great Barrier Reef is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Prof Helen McGregor, from the Universit...

Fuelled by climate change, the world’s oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year, a BBC analysis finds. Nearly 50 days have smashed existing highs for the time of year by the largest margin in the satellite era. Planet-warming gases are mostly to blame, but the natural weather event El Niño has also helped warm the seas.

The super-heated oceans have hit marine life hard and driven a new wave of coral bleaching.

The analysis is based on data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Service.

Copernicus also confirmed that last month was the warmest April on record in terms of global air temperatures, extending that sequence of month-specific records to 11 in a row.

For many decades, the world’s oceans have been the Earth’s ‘get-out-of-jail card’ when i...

Inside the bodies of humpback whales are clues about how climate change is transforming Antarctica. Our BBC science team crossed the Southern Ocean, with the researchers, on a mission to follow and study the giant whales of this remote, frozen wilderness. At 03:00 in the morning there is an almighty crash. Every drawer in our cabin is flung open and contents hurled against the wall. We hit a 12-metre wave.

I’m not a seafarer; this is alarming, but apparently not unusual on the Drake Passage – the stretch of the notoriously rough Southern Ocean we are on. We’re aboard a 200-passenger tourist ship, with a team of wildlife scientists, on our way to the Antarctic Peninsula.

One of the researcher...

Nearly all corals on a reef at Lizard Island in Australia are dead following one of the worst mass bleaching events the world’s largest coral reef system has ever endured, new drone imagery has revealed. Scientists from Macquarie University, James Cook University, and GeoNadir first mapped the area around Lizard Island in March 2024 and repeated the survey this month. The imagery they collected revealed that at least 97% of the reef had died amid record-breaking sea surface temperatures.

“This is not pretty but I will not apologise for the data. Suck up the discomfort. When is enough enough?” Dr. Karen Joyce, one of the scientists behind the discovery, wrote on X.

In April,  the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) and the International Coral Reef Initia...

Soft-body submersibles designed to resemble and move like manta rays have been developed by a team at the School of Navigation of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province in central China, for monitoring coral reefs.  The R&D team began developing submersibles for coral reef monitoring in 2006, by studying the swimming patterns of marine organisms for their prototypes.

More recently, they have monitored outbreaks of species such as the crown-of-thorns starfish, which pose a threat to coral reefs by feeding on them in the South China Sea.

The team’s smaller submersibles are utilized for marine education and coral reef monitoring, while their larger models can dive deeper and for longer periods to collect more data.

Many people are curious wh...

Originally published on February 2,2023, this article has been updated on June 4, 2024 to reflect the latest research and statistics.

The International Shark Attack File (ISAF) from the Florida Museum of Natural History looked into 120 reported shark-human interactions across the globe in 2023. Among them, there were 69 unprovoked shark attacks, exceeding the five-year average of 63 attacks per year. However, experts stress that this doesn’t necessarily mean shark attacks are on the rise.

Many people have a firm view on sharks; however, the following shark attack numbers will highlight the truth behind these majestic creatures.

Sharks are intensely beautiful creatures...

Fuelled by climate change, the world’s oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year, a BBC analysis finds. Nearly 50 days have smashed existing highs for the time of year by the largest margin in the satellite era. Planet-warming gasses are mostly to blame, but the natural weather event El Niño has also helped warm the seas. The super-heated oceans have hit marine life hard and driven a new wave of coral bleaching. The analysis is based on data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Service.

Copernicus also confirmed that last month was the warmest April on record in terms of air temperatures, extending that sequence of month-specific records to 11 in a row.

For many decades, the world’s oceans have been the Earth’s ‘get-out-of-jail card’ when it comes to c...

The world is not doing enough to protect coral reefs, the United Nations’ special envoy for the ocean said last week, in defence of the marine ecosystems that protect biodiversity, sustain underwater life, and produce some of the oxygen we breathe. In an interview with The Associated Press on the sidelines of an international ocean conference in Greece, Peter Thomson suggested that all significant coral reefs should be included in marine protected areas under what is known as the “30×30” initiative, a plan to designate 30% of the world’s land and ocean areas as protected areas by 2030.

Top reef scientists announced last week that coral reefs are experiencing global bleaching for the fourth time—and the second time in just 10 years—as a result of warming oceans amid human-...

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest collection of coral reefs, a natural wonder stretching over 1,400 miles off Australia’s Queensland coast, hosting 400 types of coral and thousands of fish species. Since 1981, it has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and most of its ecosystem is protected.

But you might not know that it is also the stage for daily underwater concerts. Take a dive or listen to marine biologist Steven Simpson’s recordings and you hear grunt fish grunt, shrimps snap, damselfish chirp, clownfish grumble, sperm whales click and humpback whales sing their soprano mating songs that are audible over tens of miles.

“When I tell them fish have ears, people look at me like I’m mad,” says University of Bristol professor Steve Simpson...